7 million years ago the corn and sunflower fields of some vast areas of southern Bulgaria they were covered with savannahs similar to those that affect Africa tropical of our day, gazelles and giraffes roamed us. And perhaps even, surprisingly, the oldest ancestor of the human species moved there.
The clues to this, which could be a groundbreaking paleoanthropological discovery, come from a small group of researchers working on an ancient deposit left by a dry river near the quiet village of Rupkite .
It all began in 2002 when the 5-year-old grandson of paleontologist Petar Popdimitrov he accidentally found what looked like a fossil of a tooth with three roots. “Initially I thought it was an animal's tooth, because it was a blue-gray color. It looked very worn, especially the chewing surface. But my son-in-law, who is a dentist, said it could be from a human being, "said Popdimitrov .
In 2007 the paleontologist showed the tooth to professor Nikolai Spassov , of the Bulgarian National Museum of Natural History is in Denis Geraads of the Natural Museum of Paris who began a research in their spare time on the find.
Now 10 years later Spassov and Madelaine Boehme of Tubingen University (German), who participated in the research, have advanced the hypothesis that the tooth could get stuck in a jaw that was found near Athens in 1944 .
The latter was discovered by German soldiers while digging a bunker during the Second World War, but was not studied at the time. The two finds allowed the researchers to advance the hypothesis that they belong to a creature called Graecopithecus , a hominid who had recently broken away from the line of ape-like individuals. If so, it must be admitted that the Graecopithecus emigrated to Africa later, and gave way to subsequent individuals that led to the genus Homo .